youth

On January 17, news about a state hospital in one of the largest districts of Istanbul hit the headlines.

The law, which women’s organizations and the parliamentary opposition have been protesting comprises significant changes in the regulation of marriage matters contrary to secular principles and to the disadvantage of women. Authorizing religious authorities, the muftis, to officiate marriages is only one of them. 

The Turkish education system has become a battlefield of both policies and ideologies in Turkey. The latest proof of that is the abolishment of the entrance exams for secondary education last month. 

In an incident last year in November, 11 children and one 18-year old staff member lost their lives after a fire broke out in a student dormitory for girls in the Aladağ district of the southern Turkish city of Adana.

All that Barış Yazgı wanted was a chance to study music. He died trying to fulfill this wish on April 24th, drowning in the Aegean Sea. 

The students, the parents, the graduate associations of these long-established schools criticize this policy of project schools to the making of which they didn’t participate in any way, and fear that the government sees these schools as the new fronts in expanding its Islamist hegemony.

Although the Ensar case revealed the situation in officially non-recognized dormitories affiliated with religious foundations, there have been many other cases brought into light recently, where students –boys and girls- have been exposed to sexual abuse, even violence by their teachers and principals in state schools, particularly boarding schools. 

While Turkey is currently going through a period of grave repressions of the freedom of expression, which targets academicians, journalists, and human rights activists in particular, the sequential yet spontaneous protest actions undertaken by high school students have been evaluated as hope-inspiring and courageous many liberal activists.